Itachi's Boy
by Lucillia
Summary: To Sasuke, Itachi was both Mother and Father as well as older brother. Oneshots of a world where Fugaku and Mikoto died fighting against the Kyuubi during the Kyuubi attack. Not all will be in Chronological Order.
1. Hiruzen's Regret

Sarutobi Hiruzen didn't know why he'd sent that order out at the last minute. Possibly because they would need all the help they could get fighting the Kyuubi and that nobody could be spared for other tasks, such as guiding civilians who should already have the disaster plans and escape routes memorized, considering all of the schools religiously taught them and ran monthly drills during the two previous wars. Danzo had been the one who'd sent out an order telling the Uchiha to stay away from the fight with the Kyuubi and to direct the Civilians to shelters. At the last second, an instant before he'd headed out to join the fight against the monster Kitsune that was rampaging through town, he had sent out an order belaying Danzo's order and directing the Uchiha to join the fight posthaste.

The fight wasn't all that long, fifteen minutes tops, but the opponent was stronger than any ten kage combined and could only be contained at great cost. Many good shinobi lay dead at the end of it all. Much of Konoha's best, those that had survived the most recent war and had been looking forward to a few years of peace, not this, definitely not this, lay strewn across the rubble of broken buildings that had once been a thriving downtown. Bodies of people who were friends as well as subordinates were being lined up in the nearest park one after the other while iryo-nin triaged the wounded, sometimes forcing themselves to leave people who might've lived under other circumstances to die because they didn't have the time or the resources to treat their near-mortal injuries considering the massive number of casualties that had been left behind by the Kyuubi's rampage.

Hiruzen's own wife was gone, the first death of the evening. Taken by the mysterious Uchiha who had attacked out of nowhere for no reason that anybody could see. So many people's wives were gone. And husbands, and sisters, and brothers, and fathers, and mothers. Shinobi weren't islands. And, as was often the case, civilians were amongst the first to die.

The crisis was over however, and it was now time to come out of hiding and rebuild once more. As quickly as possible before other villages decided to take advantage of their weakness and do to Konoha what had been done to Uzushiogakure. The damaged walls would have to be patched fast, and the retired called out of retirement, and the children fast-tracked through the Academy like they had been during the war despite the recent switch back to a peacetime academic schedule.

As he tallied what would need to be done in the near future to ensure Konoha's survival, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konoha, and possibly soon Hokage again, decided that he would pay a personal visit to the shelters behind the Hokage Monument, offering what comfort he could in his own grief. The people would need hope that they could survive in order for them to do what it would take to survive, and it was up to the Hokage who had to be more than just the strongest ninja in the village and more than just the one to do "what it took" to protect the village to provide that hope.

Entering the hidden shelters, the Sandaime could see lost looking children everywhere, some of whom were plaintively calling for parents they'd never see again, some of whom had already lost their parents years earlier in the recent war. A small boy with a nasty looking cut across his nose was clinging to a dazed looking drunk and crying. Sitting silently in a corner, a small dark-haired boy held a crying infant in his arms.

Looking at those two, Hiruzen felt guilt for the words he'd said the night before. Guilt for the order he'd given. The order that had led to the Uchiha Clan head and his wife lying amongst the dead. Had he not said a word and let Danzo's order stand, those two small boys, one of whom had been named after his father, would not have been deprived of their parents.


	2. What is Life?

As Itachi stood in the cemetery once again wearing mourning clothes as the dead are buried, he finds himself yet again wondering about what exactly life was...

 _Life dies._

Two of the most important in his life had died alongside many others. Looking at the twin graves that bore the Uchiha crest alongside the Konoha leaf, Itachi remembered another day in the cemetery, a question asked, and dead yellow eyes looking down at him as their owner, Orochimaru of the Sannin, had said that life was meaningless.

 _Life dies._

He remembers the battlefield, the ninja begging for water who had nearly killed him only to be killed himself as his father whom he'd been looking for came out of nowhere and saved him.

 _Life is meaningless._

He remembers the cliff, the crows, the decision to slow his fall down at the last second. The desperate skid down, down, down...

 _Life dies._

He remembers the sight of the pair of bodies as they were prepared for funeral. The grave markers rested above urns of ashes, cremated as Uchiha tradition dictated.

 _Life is..._

A baby that had cried nonstop the day and night before and had refused the bottle that was so unlike his mother's nurturing breast cries once more. Uruchi, who along with her husband Teyaki runs the Uchiha Senbei, does her best to silence the baby that usually only stops crying when he was either in the arms of his now dead parents or Itachi's arms and no others.

 _Life is born._

He remembers the trip to the hospital as he worried that his mother was sick. He remembers her telling him how he's going to be a big brother and that he would have to be there for his little brother or sister.

 _Life dies._

His parents were gone. Forever. Replaced by cold stone markers, like the parents of many others. While he stands there seemingly blankly, trying to understand, there are tears on the faces of many. Including a tallish brown haired boy with a healing cut on his nose whose sobs seem loud enough to wake the dead.

 _Life is born._

He remembers his father's joy in the hospital as his father fairly danced around the room with baby Sasuke in his arms. He remembers his father's happiness as the man named his second son after Sarutobi Sasuke, father to Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konoha.

He remembers how his exhausted mother had indulgently looked on, love in her eyes for all her boys.

 _Life is born._

"Here, let me." Itachi says to Uruchi as he holds his arms out for Sasuke. The first words he's uttered since he'd been informed that what he'd feared a year ago when he'd run out onto a battlefield searching for his parents had come to pass when he'd least expected it.

Sasuke is laid in Itachi's arms, and the baby falls quiet, into a slumber that is far less fitful than the one he'd awoken from at the funeral of parents he would never know except through memories related to him by his older brother who had seen them in their unguarded moments when they were being husband and wife rather than Clan Head and the Wife of the Clan Head.

 _Life is born._

When they got back, he would see if he could maybe get Sasuke to take a little bit of milk like he did when his mother and father had left him in charge of him. It was for longer than he thought it would be when his parents had handed him the bundle in a sling and gone off somewhere, but even though his elders said he wasn't in charge, that a five year-old was too young for such a burden, he was in charge of Sasuke.

He was the only one left who could get him to stop crying after all.


	3. No Objections

Uchiha Uruchi found herself saying the one word that Fugaku never would've said, never would've forgiven her for saying. But, Fugaku wasn't here in this new compound which had been built upon the rubble of the old, everything in as close to its old places as everyone could get it. Her younger brother wasn't responsible for Itachi anymore though, and there was no pressing need, especially considering what normally happened to the children who took this route.

For the sake of the future of their clan, the future Clan Head needed to remain unbroken.

So, when the Academy had recommended graduating Itachi early, when he'd been at the Academy less than a year, Uruchi had said "no".

Though she had expected he would, since frankly any child who'd been given the chance would, at least until Itachi, Itachi had not protested this decision. At least, he hadn't done so publically in front of any of the Outsiders who were split in their views of the Uchiha Clan.

On the one hand, the likelihood that the perpetrator was a Uchiha was high, given Madara's actions at the Valley of the End and the rumors that had been spreading. On the other hand however, the Uchiha Clan had paid a dear price much like the rest of the village, and everyone knew that the second the Uchiha figured out which one of them had done it, it would be a matter of hoping there was something left for the village to get retribution against when the Uchiha were done tearing them apart.

While the villagers scruitinized the Uchiha, wondering if the one they were talking to were the guilty party camoflauging themselves as an innocent member of the clan who patrolled their streets providing law and order, nobody scruitinized the Uchiha more than their fellow Uchiha who would never forgive the loss of the Clan Head and his wife which had left the clan Headless until Itachi was old enough to take Fugaku's place.

When Uruchi and Itachi got home, Uruchi turned to ask her nephew why he had not objected to her refusing his early graduation.

"Why should I object when I'm needed here?" Itachi asked as he walked into the sitting room and scooped up his younger brother who happily shrieked "'Tachi!". "With me away on missions, you would have to reduce productivity and therefore profits in order to look after Sasuke, lessening the amount of funds you would have available to support us, yourself, and your eventual retirement."

"You're such a kind and thoughtful boy!" Uruchi exclaimed, patting Itachi on the head before the boy had a chance to dodge. Itachi may have been a genius prodigy, but Uruchi hadn't spent her _entire_ life working with her husband in the Senbei shop.

Itachi gave her one of his almost smiles and proceeded to get Sasuke ready to head outside. Presumably so they could meet Itachi's friend Shisui.


End file.
